Kal Zekdor’s Techdirt Profile

About Kal Zekdor

Kal Zekdor’s Comments

Much of the piracy that game publishers want to prevent is during the initial release. Piracy is less of a concern during the long tail. As such, publishers are starting to make initial releases with restrictive DRM to maximize on the initial burst of interest, then remove the DRM after the buzz has died down. That lets them generate more interest for being consumer friendly, reduces support costs, and additionally opens up new markets. They're getting the benefits of DRM while sidestepping the costs.

Techdirt doesn't hold comments for moderation based on content, and doesn't try to silence people. The site does, however, try to promote honest discourse, and one of the things it tries to prevent is sock-puppet posting. Making multiple posts in the same thread with different email addresses will usually trigger manual review, which can take some time. Using proxies to attempt to get around that certainly wouldn't help. Just be patient, and eventually someone will get around to reviewing the posts, and in most cases they'll be approved.

Note, though, that the techdirt community has an unfortunate tendency to abuse the report comment feature to hide comments they disagree with. That's unrelated to the site staff, though, and is entirely done by the users.

People 35+ don't really need ID to buy alcohol/tobacco, not a whole lot of people actually own guns, there are plenty of people without bank accounts, you don't need an ID to file taxes, and school-age individuals can't vote...

Several people behind some of the state voter ID laws have themselves admitted that the reason they were pursuing those laws was to suppress likely Democratic voters. If you really think these politicians care one whit for "protecting society", I've got a bridge to sell you.

Those behind the various pushes for voter ID laws are not racist. (Well, probably. At least, there's no correlation there.) They are, however, purposefully attempting to make it harder for minorities to vote. This has been well documented. Now, they're not doing so because they hate said minorities and want to silence them, they're doing so because those groups tend to vote Democrat. This is politics, pure and simple.

It really is. What he reads into other people says more about how he views the world than anything else. "Your leadership", "you followers"... Particular amusing given that I'm an independent that dislikes the very idea of political parties.

Keep living in your fantasy world. Going out in a blaze of glory doesn't help anyone. Rational people know when to compromise, even if it means swallowing your pride. If the democratic party had split over Bernie/Hillary, Trump would have waltzed into the presidency without breaking a sweat. And, before you start on about Trump winning regardless, well, hindsight is 20/20, and it was a close race, as indicated by the popular vote. Trump won several key states by a hair. Bernie made the best choice he could have made at the time.

Trump appealed to those dissatisfied with our government, and that's a large group of people. Bernie also appealed to that segment, while Hillary represented everything they hated. I'm not saying Bernie would have pulled that segment entirely from Trump, given the manufactured fear attached to "socialism" (despite the fact that if Bernie wanted to get anything done he'd need to lean moderate, so worrying about him turning America into a socialist republic was completely unwarranted.) He would have pulled some of that segment away from Trump, though, and for the most part the other voting blocks would have voted as they did, which might have made all the difference.

Still, there's no use worrying about what might have been. We'll just have to deal with Trump. He won't be as bad as the fearmongering would have us believe, but he'll move in the wrong direction on several topics I care about, including this one.

I get that, but it's still disrespectful to the troops. They didn't choose to get involved in the messes in Afghanistan/Iraq. They serve as directed, and it's not their fault how they were directed. Even many vets feel that Iraq, in particular, was bungled mess, but that's no reason to be dismissive of their personal sacrifices.

Following orders under a failure of leadership is one of the hardest things that can be asked of soldiers, but it is important. We can't have the entire military deserting because they disagree with the leadership.

Like I said, if you want to criticize the civilian leaders involved, please, be my guest. Just don't belittle the sacrifices made by those who bore more consequences from those decisions than anyone else in this country.

What are you talking about? He's a vet with PTSD. You don't get PTSD without trauma (hint: it's in the name), and trauma implies danger. Doesn't fucking matter whether we were at war at the time, or whether or not military action was the ideal course of action. He was serving his country, and his country ordered him into danger. Ergo, he risked his life for his country.

If you want to criticize the elected officials involved in the "war on terror", I'm right there with you, but don't be dismissive of his or other vets' sacrifices. It's just disrespectful.

Ehhh... The one about the second ammendment is just wild hypothetical boasting, with the intent of making a political statement. The other one is actually the more concerning of the two, but it's still clearly someone venting anger through violent fantasies. Neither statement is a direct threat, and they shouldn't be treated as such. Both of those statements are, of course, quite offensive and divisive, but since when was that grounds to put someone through a "voluntary" psych eval?

Why don't you blame the ISP used to access the information while you're at it, or the manufacturer of the device used, or hell, blame Pope Gregory XIII for the calendar being used to mark age, because that makes exactly as much sense as what you just said.

No, you're fairly correct on the first one. As the number of subscribers approaches zero, the monthly bill required to maintain revenue approaches infinity.

As the cost of service increases, they lose subscribers, which increases the cost of service, which loses subscribers, et cetera ad nauseam. It's a self-reinforcing cycle, and if they don't do something about it right now (such as accepting lower revenue rates, or improving customer experience) they have no chance of avoiding the forthcoming point of criticality which starts the runaway chain-reaction.

It is possible to think that both actions were wrong. Well, actually, all three actions.

The "message" of the tweet was certainly idiotic. It was also offensive, though I, personally, care less about that than the actual ramifications of the policy it endorses.

Junior should have taken the time to find a public domain or freely licensed image, or pulled out his phone and taken one himself. Using a proprietary image for your own purposes like this isn't acceptable, and just because it's about politics doesn't mean it's fair use.

The author of the image was within his rights to take down the image. However, he did not object so much to the use of the image, but rather to the associated speech. If it had been speech he agreed with, or likely was even ambivalent towards, I doubt he would have acted in the same manner. So, here we have an individual who is using copyright not to protect the value of his works, but to stifle speech he disagrees with. That's not something that I can accept.

Familiarizing oneself and complying with regulations is just a cost of doing business. I don't think that the "burden" argument has any merit here. If there was a legitimate need for these regulations, then, unless the burden is unreasonable, it shouldn't be a concern. An unreasonable burden would be one that the majority of businesses would be unable to responsibly meet. In this case, that would mean businesses that give up on wifi altogether. I don't think that's the case here. I mean, sure, nobody's happy about shelling out, at worst, 500 euros to hire somebody to bring the wifi into compliance for them, so that they don't need any knowledge. A couple hours of research and some minor technical acumen can cut that cost down seriously. But it's not an unreasonable burden. No one is going to have to close up shop because they can't afford to comply.

Ultimately, objecting to this regulation because of the burden it would cause is a red herring. I mean, what if they provide a grant and a team of government qualified contractors to every business that wants to offer wifi. Or, more likely, subsidize business ISPs to provide compliant equipment, as most of the businesses offering wifi (at least the ones with no technical staff) are probably using whatever equipment their ISP provided. Suddenly the burden argument is gone, and the rest gets a hand waving. This should be objected to because of the horrible precedents it sets regarding privacy, not because it might cause businesses to spend some money.